The Internet is becoming a primary method for distributing media content (e.g., video and audio or audio) and other information to end users. It is currently possible to download music, video, games, and other media information to computers, cell phones, and virtually any network capable device. The percentage of people accessing the Internet for media content is growing rapidly. The quality of the viewer experience is a key barrier to the growth of video viewing on-line. Even with current capacity and demand, performance can be uneven, with streams starting slowly, stopping unexpectedly, and audio tracks not always synchronizing well with video. Many of these issues can be traced to the unpredictable nature of the Internet and uncertain capacity at the consumer access level. Consumer expectations for online video are set by their television and movie viewing experiences. Appointment TV and “live” event broadcasts, whether distributed over the air, via cable, or through satellite, attract very large audiences.
Audience numbers for streaming video on the web are rapidly growing, and there are a growing interest and demand for viewing video on the Internet. Streaming of data files or “streaming media” refers to technology that delivers sequential media content at a rate sufficient to present the media to a user at the originally anticipated playback speed without significant interruption. Unlike downloaded data of a media file, streamed data may be stored in memory until the data is played back and then subsequently deleted after a specified amount of time has passed.
Streaming media content of live events (e.g., Appointment TV, live broadcast events, etc.) over the Internet have some challenges, as compared to regular broadcasts over the air, satellite, or cable. One concern that arises in the context of distribution of media content over the Internet, regardless of the method used for delivery, is how to control access to the media content. For example, in some circumstances, the media content is available for delivery at different quality levels. Some content owners may want to encode their media content at very high-quality levels, but these high-quality levels incur higher costs to encode, store, and deliver the higher quality media content. In an effort to control costs, the content owners may want to control access to the higher quality levels in certain circumstances. For example, the content owners may want to offer to paying customers the higher quality versions, while restricting access to the higher quality versions to non-paying customers. Similarly, the content owners may want to offer a demonstration video at a high quality, but restrict access to the demonstration video by the general public. In other circumstances, the content owners may want to offer a free version of the video at a lower quality to entice customers to sign up for a paid subscription, so they can view the higher quality versions. To address this concern, the content owners may decide to not encode the media content at the higher quality levels, or encode the media content at the higher quality levels, but forcibly remove the higher quality copies from the content server in order to restrict access to the higher quality levels. For example, the higher quality copies may be copied to another location and deleted from the content server. Not only is this process manual, this process can be tedious and cumbersome and eliminates the possibility of having a tiered subscription service.
Another concern with controlling access to certain quality levels of the media content is that content owners need to restrict access in a way that cannot be easily circumvented by customers. In one conventional approach, a control access mechanism is implemented in the media player on the client device. The control access mechanism may indicate that the media player should not play above a certain quality level, for example, by setting a cap on the maximum bit rate of the video that should be delivered to the client device. Unfortunately, such control access mechanisms can be circumvented by a user of the client device, such as by using a script to remove the cap on the maximum bit rate. Similarly, most conventional client-side solutions for access control can be circumvented.